Cait's Ramblings

This is gunna be long.

As I've mentioned in many of my other 
posts, I wasted a ton of money, time, patience, life, and my job because
of this epic fail of a health care system.

Sorry if this gets a little personal or graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.

November 9th 2010
- My 22nd Birthday. I never have periods. Maybe a couple times a 
year... but when I do have them, they are terribly bad. They are "I cant
even leave the toilet" bad. Literally. I can't go to work like this, 
otherwise I would have to keep running back to the bathroom every 20 
minutes, and in retail, that wouldn't fly. I went to a prompt care 
doctor. He tested me for iron deficiency and said that everything was 
fine, and gave me some prescription strength Aleeve, and made an 
appointment to check out my girly parts. I didn't think the Aleeve would
stop the bad periods, not at all, but I took it, and crazily enough, it
stopped almost immedietely. I was up all night crying because I don't 
want someone to see my girly parts! Noone had ever seen them but me. I 
planned on canceling the appointment but I was crying over it 
nonetheless. I stayed up till around 11am the next morning upset over 
it. I finally slept... till around 1pm.

November 10th, 2010 - 1pm. I woke up for no reason..
extremely tired. I had no intention of doing ANYTHING but rolling over 
and going back to sleep. I rolled over and attempted to do just that... 
When suddenly I have this sharp pain in my left side of my chest. I get 
random pains sometimes, so I think nothing of it, and try to sleep.. but
it comes back... and it keeps stabbing me. Stab stab stab. I bolt 
upright. This is not right. Something is not right.

Holy crap, I'm having a heart attack. My blood pressure skyrockets. 
The back of my neck and head gets really cold and tingly. My left arm 
feels messed up, and there's this INCREDIBLY terrible feeling that this 
is it. I'm going to die. I feel extremely claustrophobic, like nothing I
had ever felt before. I felt like I have to stand up, but sit down at 
the same time. I feel like I have to talk about 20 different things at 
random... changing subject every 10 seconds... and talk REALLY loud 
about them.

But this is it. I'm going to die. I call my dad at work, and they 
won't let me talk to him. He gets home in an hour, so I try and wait my 
death out.. Crying hysterically. The pain keeps stabbing me, so I call 
again and i SCREAM in their ear that I NEED to talk to him RIGHT NOW. 
They say they will have him call me. 15 minutes later, he calls me, and I
tell him what is going on (Hysterically). I figure I may be having an 
allergic reaction to the Aleeve. My dad asks me if I can wait until he 
gets home from work, or if I need to go to the hospital right now... By 
now, I'm a little bit calmer, the chest pains aren't so bad... so I 
guess I can wait.

He gets home, and I hug him. My family never shows any affection 
whatsoever. I had never hugged my dad before, but I hugged him now. I'm 
on my deathbed, so I hug him. We get into his van and head back to 
Prompt Care. I'm extremely exhausted, I'm dirty from not having a 
shower, and I'm a hysterical sobbing mess. They say that my vitals are 
good, and that I should go to the ER if I keep having problems.

I don't have insurance. So, If I die from this.. I Die. I can't afford the ER.

My brother had a glow in the dark band concert that night, so I went 
to that, still a mess... but quieter. I kept having chest pains 
consistantly.. several times an hour. Always on the top left of my 
chest. I call my boyfriend on his lunch break, and I tell him what is 
going on. He leaves work immedietly and meets us after the band concert.
(Which was really cool, dispite being in so much pain)

He's a wreck, thinking that I'm going to die as well. He holds my 
hand and pets my head trying to get me to sleep. Believe me, it's hard 
trying to get to sleep when there's a knife stabbing you in the chest 
every 15 minutes or so. I eventually sleep...

I later find out that the thing that happened...the numbness.. coldness.. was called aLEGITIMATE panic attack. I had a few more after this throughout the years.

And so begins my quest online to find out what is wrong with me. I find nothing other than "Go to a doctor. Go to a doctor."

The 1st of the year, Obamacare aka Affordable Healthcare Act kicks in, and I get insurance.

January 1st, I was in a doctor's office. He said it sounded like high blood pressure. (Um, what?) So I go on BP pills.

No relief. So he does an EKG of my heart.. and it is slightly enlarged, which means I have leaky heart valve disease.

I go to a heart specialist.. he says my heart is fine, and that 
my heart is a little bigger than normal hearts because -I- am a little 
bigger than normal PEOPLE. He says my heart is 100% fine.

I go 
back to Doctor #1. He's pissed that I went to a heart specialist because
"HE" knows what "HE" is doing. He literally yells at me, swears at me, 
and tells me to NEVER come back again. (I find out later, that this same
doctor sent my grandpa-in-law home during a heart attack, not to the 
hospital. Also that he was arrested for healthcare fraud several times. 
Needless to say, I tell everyone I meet not to go to this doctor.)

I try another doctor... and another... and another. Each one says 
something different is wrong with me. I went to nearly every doctor I 
could find around here that would accept my insurance.

"There is nothing"
"Costochondritous"
"The pain is in your head"
"You're imagining it"
"It's Fibromyalgia"
"It's a misaligned spine, and could be fixed with 12 more treatments"
"It's Sleep Apnea"
"Go to a mental health clinic, as there's nothing any doctor in the world can do for you"
"We won't accept you at MSU unless another doctor referrs you here"
"There's a huge wait at Mayo Clinic, and each appointment would be several months apart"
"You
have abnormal female hair growth" (I never understood why she said this
as I don't have a beard, and I'm not particularly hairy.)

The overwhelming majority of them tell me the pain is in my head... I
was forced to quit my job because the pain was wearing my patience 
extremely thin and the lack of ANYONE caring made me hate everyone and 
anyone that screwed me over. Long story short - I worked at walmart. 
2/3rds of the store had quit, and I was left alone by myself to deal 
with ALL of the service counters and departments. Noone ever answered 
their pages... The few people / managers left in the store would wander 
outside or take 2 hour long breaks and not man their service areas... It
was me and the entire store some nights.  They told me to not worry 
about the customers. Don't serve all of them. IF they get mad, oh well.

I
didn't work like that. All my customers get 100% the best service no 
matter what. I can't tell customers no when I have the ability to tell 
them Yes. 

I called out for a month, and then finally quit.

So I go to a mental health clinic.. I get evaluated, and I get 
several appointments. Nothing is wrong with me to cause that pain. 
Nothing in my mind at least. Instead, we talk about things like my 
paranoia and anxiety. Eventually we find out that I have a mild form of 
Autism called Aspergers. It makes sense considering how weird I am. (An 
example - I have to blend spagetti sauce before I can eat it.. and I 
have to wear socks inside out.)

My boyfriend through all of this 
is great to me. He's extremely patient, understanding, and helps me 
through all the appointments.. through my rage at all of the stupid 
doctors who don't care about me or my health.. they want to randomly 
diagnose me and give me a pill and shove me out the door, but make sure I
Come back later to give them more money. He rubbed my arm every night 
to help me sleep. I hadn't been able to sleep well since then at all, as
you can imagine.

I get desperate. I stop drinking tap water. Maybe it's the florine in
the water. I stop eating anything with tomatoes in it.. Maybe it's an 
acid thing... I stop eating bread - maybe it's a wheat allergy.

I try everything under the sun to try and figure out what is wrong 
with me. I've posted on countless forums, message boards, sent tons of 
emails, and done more research than I care to admit trying to find out 
what is wrong with me...

I can't work like this, so I am unemployed. I make ends meet by 
selling stuff on ebay, and whoring my graphic design skills out for 
LITERALLY pennies an hour to some guy in Isreal.

The only relief I
found was prilosec. It helped the chest pains go down by about 20%. It 
says to take it only for 2 weeks, but I took it for an entire year.

I felt on numerous occasions that dying was the only way out. The 
only thing that kept me going was that I really wanted to have a family 
of my own some day.

One week (December 2012), my boyfriend bought me a TON of 
cranberry apple juice. It's my favorite juice, but it's really 
expensive, so I don't have it very often. I drank exclusively that for a
week.

My chest pains stopped.

What? What was it? Was it the no tomato diet? The no wheat diet? The cranberries antioxidant? Was it the lack of pop?

I
wracked my brain trying different things to pinpoint it. Christmas 2012
I went to my boyfriend's family's house. They only had sparkling juice 
to drink, so I drank that. The chest pains came back, worse than ever. I
curled up into a ball in a chair and spent the entire evening like 
that.

It was pop. Anything carbonated.

I stopped drinking it.. The 
chest pains stopped. I still anticipated them though.. Every 15 minutes,
I would feel like I have to wince, as I'd been doing it for years now..
But the chest pains never came... I was almost in a cloudy fog... Not 
wincing.. not being in pain. This was foreign to me.

It was almost scary. I went back to the doctor one last time and 
DEMANDED a stomach test. They gave me this REALLY nasty chalky white dye
to drink, and took x-rays of my stomach. I was there for 4 hours 
drinking that stuff, and getting X-rayed. It sucked.

They found out I had a Hiatel Hernia. Well.. that's that then. I assume the carbination messes with that.

Now
that my chest pains were gone, and I found out what happened, I refuse 
to go to the doctors anymore. They did nothing but steal my money and 
say whatever they wanted to say to get me to come back and give them 
more of my money.

I've been chest pain free for a little over a year now, but it still 
affects me mentally. I'm a nervous wreck a lot. I have issues trusting 
people, and especially doctors. I worry constantly, more than I did in 
the past...

But I'm glad that the pain has stopped. It comes back whenever I drink pop, so I switch to tea and juice.

That's
my story.. bravo if you read it all. and pass the word along to any 
friends who are having chest pains - try stop drinking pop... Before 
someone else gets hurt or killed because of doctors incompetency.

Do i think the expense was justified? Hell no.